Linnea Hartsuyker follows up her totally winning debut The Half-Drowned King with another...historical novel set in medieval Norway. The Half-Drowned King concentrated on the story of Ragnar Eysteinsson, a fighting man and brother-in-arms to Norway's King Harald, and The Sea Queen continues his adventures as he takes more and more ambitious gambles Harald's service, despite the personal costs that have been exacted along the way ... The Sea Queen tells her story with rousing confidence and carefully-timed intervals of quiet sympathy, at once a...adventure story and a moving portrait of very complicated love. This is an even more accomplished novel than its predecessor and sets the reader keenly on edge for the next volume in the series.
The Sea Queenis Svanhild Eysteinsdotter, a strong-willed woman with a difficult path ahead. In ninth-century Norway, six years after the events in The Half-Drowned King, Svanhild, married to the raider Solvi, loves her seafaring life but knows her intellectual son’s needs must come first ... Through her multifaceted characters, Hartsuyker adeptly evokes female alliances, the complications of love and passion, and vengeance both terrible and triumphant as she effectively juggles many subplots and settings, from Norway’s harsh, picturesque coast to sulfurous Iceland and Dublin’s muddy harbor.
The Sea Queen is less focused on the characters’ inner lives and more on the complex web of incidents that tests their loyalties and shapes their destinies, but all three main characters, Svanhild particularly, are so...realized in their intelligence and emotional development that the descriptions of sea voyages, battles, and mead hall law-wrangling mesh seamlessly with the more personal stories ... This compelling story is enhanced by a wealth of detail about the daily lives of Norse men and women, whose ambition and entrepreneurship sent them all over the known world centuries before the rest of Europe began its age of exploration. This is historical fiction at its best and shouldn’t be missed.
Things aren’t going exactly as planned for Ragnvald, who has fought in King Harald’s quest to unite Norway for six bloody years. As a warrior, Ragnvald is used to raids and war, but he is often startled by Harald’s penchant for revenge. Even after all the warring is said and done, Vikings have strict codes of honor, and Harald pushes Ragnvald into ever more gruesome confrontations that trouble his conscience. In a surprising move, Ragnvald’s sister, Svanhild, has married his enemy, Solvi, a skilled sailor and warrior rousing an army to resist Harald’s conquests and burdensome taxes. This puts the two siblings at odds, even after Svanhild leaves Solvi and returns to Ragnvald’s camp a grieving mother ... A seafaring epic with bloodcurdling raids and political intrigue to spare.
This fantastic story of 9th-century Scandinavia will sink its grappling hooks deep into your heart ... her writing is immediate and urgent, and she bridges the chasm of those centuries with a breath ... That intimacy in her work makes the cruelty of the time all the more striking ... the pain they live with would seem unbelievable if Hartsuyker were not such a talented writer ... This book is among the best I have read this year, and it deserves as many accolades as we can heap upon it.
Hartsuyker’s second volume in her trilogy continues the saga of Ragnvald Eysteinsson, set in ninth-century Norway, a turbulent period of bloody unrest. Ragnvald is one of Norway’s collection of minor kings. He is loyal to King Harald, who owns the most land and wants to unite all Norway under his rule, but the rivalries of rebellious petty kings and the threat of Swedish invasion could mean all-out war, and he needs Ragnvald’s help ... Though overlong, this is an ambitious tale of Norwegian medieval warfare told in richly colorful and accurate historical detail. Hartsuyker’s novel reveals just how tenuous life is when disputes are settled with sword and battle-axe.
